Barry Odom was up early on Wednesday. He’d already digested the news — as well as he could — that his starting quarterback, Matthew Sluka, had bailed three games into the season.
“Thought he had a market value higher than he was making here,” UNLV’s coach texted in the early morning gloom, at least around the Rebels’ football office.
Sluka — veteran of one month of FBS football, on-field leader of an undefeated team ranked for the first time in program history with eyes on a College Football Playoff bid — had taken his talents elsewhere. Sluka will be a redshirt senior in 2025 and can conceivably test the market once again. Leaving before playing four games allows him to keep a redshirt season. His decision is unprecedented in its scope, according to those who have endured the three-year, two-month history of NIL.
Money — the allure of it and, depending on which side you talk to, perhaps the unfulfilled delivery of it — is central to the story that shook college football on Wednesday morning.
ESPN reported that Sluka was verbally promised a minimum of $100,000 from a UNLV assistant coach. Multiple sources tell CBS Sports‘ Matt Zenitz that Sluka had not received any NIL money from UNLV. A crux of the breakdown was the fact that whatever Sluka believed he was promised by UNLV was not outlined in writing before Sluka arrived as a coveted transfer from Holy Cross.
One source close to Sluka, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the only money he received from UNLV was a player stipend.
An NIL agent described Sluka’s camp not having an agreement in writing as “catastrophic.”
Rob Sine, the CEO of Blueprint Sports, which operates UNLV’s collective, told CBS Sports it had not agreed to a $100,000 figure with Sluka.
“We were introduced to the agent less than a month ago for the first time and the agent said he wanted to explore opportunities for his client,” Sine said. “We informed that he was not registered with the state or with the school and that he needed to be so the athlete needed to talk to the coaches directly. There was a discussion via email about $3,000 a month of a recurring payment and then the agent said no we’re still discussing, we’ll let you know how things progress, don’t onboard my athlete onto your program yet. And that was it. All of this happens in the span of less than a couple weeks. We never agreed to $100,000, it was never brought to us that was what the number needed to be. I’m learning about a lot of this like you guys are.
“The collective is in great shape and has made every payment that it’s needed to make and stood up to every obligation we’ve been contracted to do,” Sine said. “Everything we do is contracted, we don’t do anything verbally. We have documentation on every deal we do. There was nothing for this guy. He received $3,000 from us this summer and that was it. We took care of that.”
UNLV released a statement Wednesday afternoon, calling demands from Sluka’s camp a “violation of NCAA pay-for-play rules.”
“Football player Matthew Sluka’s representative made financial demands upon the university and its NIL collective in order to continue playing. UNLV Athletics interpreted these demands as a violation of the NCAA pay-for-play rules, as well as Nevada state law,” the statement read. “UNLV does not engage in such activity, nor does it respond to implied threats. UNLV has honored all previously agreed-upon scholarships for Matthew Sluka. UNLV has conducted its due diligence and will continue to operate its programs within the framework of NCAA rules and regulations, as well as Nevada state laws.”
Sluka, a native of Long Island, did not profile as a high-level transfer when he left Holy Cross, ranking as the No. 32 quarterback in the portal, per 247Sports. The players at the top of that list — Cam Ward, Will Howard, Riley Leonard — most likely had NIL agreements in writing, or at least their agents would have pushed for it.
In a previous interview with CBS Sports’ Brandon Marcello explaining his team’s 3-0 start and offseason rebuild, Odom described the process of landing a commitment from Sluka in January.
“There was nothing binding him to us other than a handshake, and, ‘Yeah, I’m coming,’ until he gets to campus,” Odom told CBS Sports in a prior interview about his program’s 3-0 start and landing Sluka. “And that’s the way the rules were at that time.”
There had been recent communication between Sluka’s camp and UNLV to resolve the situation. Sources say Sluka’s agents had tried to negotiate with UNLV, including one offer that would have paid Sluka under 50% of what he was verbally promised.
Nothing materialized, leading to Sluka’s stunning exit.
“I committed to UNLV based on certain representations that were made to me, which were not upheld after I enrolled,” Sluka wrote in a graphic that was published on his X account. “Despite discussions, it became clear that these commitments would not be fulfilled in the future. I wish my teammates the best of luck this season and hope for the continued success of the program.”
Sluka’s decision is just the latest example of how unregulated promises in NIL can derail a team’s season. His exit mirrors similar situations, but for UNLV, the stakes were never higher.
The most famous example of a midseason sit-out is likely former Houston quarterback D’Eriq King, who halted his 2019 season after four games to keep his redshirt and ultimately enter the portal.
We’ve even already seen the midseason transfer a few times early in 2024. Oklahoma State offensive lineman Jason Brooks announced that he’d enter the portal last week. Earlier this week, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said that Jaden Mickey, who had been third in the team’s cornerback rotation, would do the same.
Given that history, it’s not as if a player choosing to sit out over an NIL dispute is a step too far beyond what we already see in the sport.
“You, in theory, could get another shot at a payday and maximize your time in college,” a Power Four general manager told Chris Hummer of 247Sports/CBS Sports. I think players are going to start paying attention to your four games and whether to look at it through the lens of a business decision.
Underclassmen aren’t allowed to transfer until a portal window opens in December. But many players are faced with a decision midseason around the four-game mark. For those who haven’t redshirted in their career — like Sluka — they can save a year of eligibility by choosing to shut things down.
There are also documented cases of players exercising their leverage to request more money for play.
Before Maryland’s 2022 Mayo Bowl game appearance against North Carolina State, Taulia Tagovailoa and two other players went to Maryland head coach Mike Locksley and said they’d need $50,000 each to play in the game, according to reporting by John Talty and Armen Keteyian for their 2024 college football book “The Price (more on that here).
UNLV is 3-0, ranked for the first time. Sluka is a big reason. He only has 21 completions in three games, with a 43.75% completion rate. His success has come on the ground, leading the country in missed tackles caused by a quarterback.
The prevailing sentiment is that the system is at fault here, rather than the player. It’s going to happen again. How long until players hold out in the middle of the season?
This is what the NCAA has left us in the NIL era, which is something pretty much close to squat.
Three years and two months ago, the NCAA had a chance to do more, even with the Supreme Court and every antitrust lawyer breathing down its collective neck. Instead, it ignored the hard work of a working group of accomplished administrators like then-Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby and then-Ohio State AD Gene Smith.
“I know what happened,” Smith told CBS Sports recently. “They [NCAA] went to the lawyers and stripped away a lot of stuff.”
Jaden Rashada was promised $13 million at Florida a couple of years ago. When the time came for the first payment, those involved in the deal didn’t have the cash. Rashada is at his second school now and suing Florida head coach Billy Napier, among others, over the failed NIL deal. The NCAA continues to investigate Florida, but its lack of foresight is what led to the emergence of collectives in the first place.
According to leading NIL platform Opendorse, the average Group of Five quarterback is getting an average of $116,000. The average top 25 Power Four quarterback is averaging $819,000 in NIL benefits.
The going rate for top QBs like Miami’s Cam Ward is well over $1 million.
Sluka had also explored transferring out of Holy Cross following the 2022 season and had asked what he believed to be a representative from a power-conference school what his going rate could be.
It’s unknown whether UNLV can afford either of those extremes, but there’s your “why” for Sluka. It’s just a matter of how deep the pool you swim in these days. It took Ohio State $20 million to shore up its roster in the offseason. Translation: Beat Michigan. UNLV’s program took a tumble Wednesday over a hundred thousand. In an analysis piece with 247Sports, Hummer wrote it is not the first time this calendar year UNLV has lost a transfer over what was described as a failed delivery of a promise.
“If Sluka believes he can get picked up by a P4 program and get paid top dollar, he’s in for a significant pay raise,” said Blake Lawrence, Opendorse CEO.
This is the second time UNLV has lost its “starting quarterback” over money in one year. Jayden Maiava transferred to USC following last season after throwing for more than 3,000 yards in a nine-win season for the Rebels.
The Rebels reloaded at quarterback in the transfer portal, adding Sluka and Hajj-Malik Williams from Campbell.
“Once we learned that Jayden (Maiava) was going to USC, we just went all in on every quarterback that was in the portal that we thought fit what we’re doing,” Odom told CBS Sports last week. “There was some concern that, OK, we ended up taking two guys with Sluka and then Hajj-Malik Williams, who was a great player at Campbell, and then, you know, it’s hard to keep two quarterbacks on a roster that aren’t starting, much less three, and we had a backup from last year, Cam Friel, that stayed in the program. And so it was a three-way battle, really, for who was going to start. I think we’ve got three quarterbacks that we can win with, and that’s really, really unique and valuable for us.”
While the NCAA rarely comments on NIL matters, the usual and unexpected nature of this story prompted a statement from Tim Buckley, the group’s senior vice president for external affairs.
“The NCAA fully supports college athletes profiting from their NIL, but unfortunately there is little oversight or accountability in the NIL space and far too often promises made to student-athletes are broken,” the statement read. “Positive changes are underway at the NCAA to deliver more benefits to student-athletes but without clear legal authority granted by the courts or by Congress, the NCAA, conferences and schools have limited authority to regulate third parties involved in NIL transactions.”
The school is currently in the middle of choosing whether to stay in the Mountain West or Pac-12 in realignment. Meanwhile, it is being sued by the Pac-12 as a member of the Mountain West.
All of it has overshadowed the fact UNLV also has a chance to get to the College Football Playoff. Not so much now.
The projected high in Las Vegas on Wednesday was 100 degrees. But the proverbial gloom was just settling in over Sin City and college football as a whole, which finds itself in an unregulated mess of its own doing.
Brandon Marcello, Bud Elliott and Richard Johnson contributed to this story
